Through A Backwards Mirror
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: Tess knows that tonight is her last night alive.....and sometimes looking back isn't any better than knowing you won't be able to do forward.


Title: "Life Through a Backwards Mirror"

Author: Manda

Fandom: Roswell

AN: Set during "Four Alien's and a Baby". All thought process, no scene setting.

There's a human expression, "When you die your life flashes before your eyes." And as strange as it is to admit I've never thought about dying. I've thought about being killed the pain, the blood, the inefficiency, survival denied, Zan takenbut never about dying. Being dead was just the other side of being killed.

I'm not afraid of what I'm doing, but I am afraid of dying. I wonder if any of them would ever believe that. I'm not even so much afraid of dying as I am of never seeing my son again. Never seeing him grow up, take his first steps, fall down, fall in love, learn things, find his own way, make his own family. Afraid of never feeling sunshine on my face. Of never seeing the brilliant stars around our home planet again.

Afraid of completely knowing that Max and the other will never understand why or who I am. Or was, soon.

I can feel Zan stirring in his sleep. He knows something wrong. He'll still live once this is over, but I didn't lie about being linked to him. We've been linked since he formed inside of me. My brave, strong prince, who doesn't cry except when I'm scared or hurting.

I won't be afraid. I won't cry. It's not even a consideration. My eyes are dry and my throat is clenched. I won't show them any mercy. Max will hate me even more for every death even though with each one Zan will be safer. Stranger even, I think Liz understands. And maybe even agrees. She spared my life, but by driving me here she chose not to spare a whole lot of other lives.

She'll drive back to Max. And maybe she'll cry, but either way she won't be alone. Would she give her life for Max? For Zan, my son, the prodigy of Max and I's union? Just so they'd be safe a few days longer? She let me live. It's more than I would have done.

Maybe I've left them both in good hands?

My palms feel so dry, and everything feels so static. I touch nothing, leave no trace, but I want to touch everything. These are the last things I will ever see or be near. I've never thought about dying. About walking into the belly of the beast and that being the end. I was taught to fight, to resist, to run, and to hide. Anything to survive, because survival was above everything else.

And suddenly all I want is for Nasedo to call my name from down that long hallway and tell me it's time to move again, because he's gotten another clue to where my family, my real family –Zan, Vilandra, and Rathmight be. I want him here. I want him to tell me what to do. Except he's the last person I want anywhere near me now.

They'd never understand that. He's all I had. All I ever had. Something broken, that continually kicked you, was better than nothing. He made me stronger. He made me smarter. He made me more powerful. He made me understand. Without him I would have been lost and alone. I would have had nobody.

Yet if I hadn't had him maybe I would have had someone else. Someone like the Evan's or DeLuca's op Parker's. Someone who might have cared about me, not simply about getting me to my destiny and making sure I was prepared for it when it found me.

Maybe it would have been somebody who loved me, not for being a queen or princess or powerful enitity, but just for being me. Who wanted me to be a gymnast as a child or a high school cheerleader. Someone who sold those girl cookies or wanted to go clothes shopping and try on different lipstick colors too often. To brush and braid my hair when I was little, or play tag with in the sun, and talk about my first boy crushes.

He never touched me. Never loved me. Never let anyone hurt me or sway me from my true destiny. He watched over me, taught me. I want to run crying, stumbling, pleading and hug him. I want to kill him.

Their coming now and I said I wouldn't cry. But I lied. I'm good at that. The tears have started to fall and the world around me is crackling, cracking, melting as I pull on everything I've got, but all I can hear is that discussion in English class. About Polonius saying, "to thine own self be true" in Hamlet. I tried to refute it, because the play is all about how sometimes to be yourself, you have to be the person you really aren't for a very long time.

And maybe I never knew how to be the person I was. Or maybe I was the person I wasn't for so many years I forgot how to be me. I've never thought about religion or reincarnation. I'm a human-alien hybrid who knows less about humans for living all my years but one on Earth, but I'm sure the last time I died I never thought about the chance to come back this time. Maybe I'll come back again.

Maybe I'll get it all right next time. Maybe we'll all be a family again next.

Oh, Zan. Find a better life than this...

Shhhh, no, don't cry. It's going to be alright...

Can you see that bright light? It's just the sun rising early today...

Go to sleep. That's right. Daddy's here and everything's going to be alright...


End file.
